Paula Helm

Workshop: Dealing with Value Tensions and Ethical Dilemmas in Information Systems Design

Based on the almost mythical promise that data-driven insights are the foundation for optimized processes, designs, and decisions, data has developed as an immensely powerful socioeconomic and political force over the past three decades. Consequently, much of our current information and knowledge infrastructures are built around the production, augmentation, processing, analyzing, interoperation, and benchmarking of data. In response, the field of Critical Data & Design Studies is concerned with demystifying these complex assemblages. It deconstructs the notion that data is a raw mass and thus an immediate reflection of reality, replacing it with an understanding of data as the product and catalyst of complex social practices that are not only contingent, but oozing with asymmetries of power. Responding to the acknowledgement of bias as an omnipresent fact of life and design, CDS is also concerned with how to translate relevant values into systems design and how to balance tensions between values, requirements, and interests during this process.

In addition to focusing on data and design, in this workshop, we will also address further-reaching ethical-political challenges that you may encounter during your work, by highlighting the role of entrenched informatics methodologies, modeling bias, and infrastructural dependencies as other relevant factors that require looking beyond data and design.

Workshop Language: The language of the workshop depends on the participants and can be in either German or English.